So I wrote on Patheos today about traditions, and today on here I want to talk about  “The Affective Fallacy”, or you could just call it the “experience argument”. So what is it? It’s the fallacy of stating that because you feel something or had an “experience” you are right and your argument cannot be touched. This is incorrect.

This is the fallacy theists commit when they state that because of “experiences” they’ve had, they “know” God exists. That’s not an argument, nor should it be treated as such. Their experiences do not form a reason for you to believe them, nor are their experiences somehow “above” criticism or skepticism. One personal encounter I had with this was when a woman stated that because her child survived a supposedly terminal cancer, and got better, God exists. That’s not evidence. And I refused to treat it as such. At least it isn’t evidence that God exists. It wasn’t fun to burst her bubble, but I did, and I’d do so again. I pointed out the possibility that it was a misdiagnosis, and that other possibilities needed to be ruled out prior to her gaining the ability to rightfully declare this served as any sort of argument for God.

This isn’t a valid argument because people’s experiences are limited and oftentimes limited not just because of the direct limitations of experience and memory but also due to knowledge (more specifically lack of knowledge) and bias. In regular conversations experience is often allowed to act as some sort of “argument” but that doesn’t make it valid. We shouldn’t allow this to happen, especially in today’s era, but it does. The real danger is when people make these sorts of arguments online. It’s also lazy. If you are on Facebook (as an example) making arguments from experience, that’s a sign of intellectual laziness, because you could and should just use Google to find evidence for your position. We live in an era where many (but not all) people have access to the internet, yet many people don’t use it to try and find support for or against their own positions. And when people do use it to find support, they’ll find the evidence that best suits them, and not try to find evidence for others positions, even for the sake of undermining said evidence.

Experience shouldn’t be the basis for people to form opinions on topics like religion. Especially because every religion (I’m counting atheism/irreligion here, despite the fact that both are by definition not religions) has followers who are great people and followers who are terrible people. Someone can have great or terrible experiences with “religion” (handy-dandy catchall term) due to how vocal people are about their religious views. This has absolutely no effect on how true a religion is. It might sound blunt, but the fact that someone you love survived an awful disease which typically kills victims doesn’t mean there’s an almighty, all-loving God watching out for you and your loved ones personally, but more than willing to let other victims of the same disease die. And it’s really arrogant to make claims that that is the case. And the opposite is also true: just because followers of a religion or religious view were awful to you doesn’t make their beliefs wrong. If you think God is real because atheists called you mean names over the Internet your reasoning is faulty. And (once again I have to sound blunt here) terrible things done by Christians doesn’t make God not real. The existence or non-existence of a deity isn’t dependent on your experience with people who have a particular opinion on the existence of God, Allah, Shiva, Xbalanque, or Zeus (not to mention the literally thousands of other gods I’m not talking about right now). And it’s also not based on how those who follow whichever deity happen to behave. These things exist or don’t exist independent of the actions of their followers and those who don’t follow them.

Also: I can and will be critical of your experience, and others should be too. I dislike that it makes me sound insensitive but that won’t stop me from questioning you about the experience you had. Your experience isn’t untouchable and somehow magically above skepticism. I realize that makes me sound mean, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do it. This is partially because I want to see why you think it is the particular deity you think it is, instead of another explanation including another deity.

The argument from experience is a stupid argument to make, and we should stop making it. Seriously, in 2016 there are no excuses for people to be making this argument, at least if those people have time to go on Facebook and YouTube and make claims that are when boiled down examples of this fallacy. It’s ridiculous.

Remember: If your argument is appealing to this heart, instead of say: a brain made of strawberries, it’s an argument based off of a fallacy. You cannot depend on emotions unless you are more bent on “winning” the debate you happen to be in, than you are with basing your conclusions off of facts and proper reasoning.  Avoid making generalizations and arguments based off of personal experience. Seriously. Photo credit: Shutterstock 

Let me know what you think of my coverage of this fallacy, and which fallacy you’d like to see next!